Workforce planning strategies for growing service teams
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Thinking about scaling your service team?
Expanding your service department is probably the biggest challenge most contact centers are facing today. Customer demand is higher than ever, and customer expectations continue to skyrocket. If you don’t get workforce planning dialed in…you’ll struggle.
Here’s the issue:
Most contact centers grow their teams reactively. When demand increases they hire more agents. When customer complaints flood in, they train more staff. When understaffing creates poor service, they restructure teams and try to fix it.
By the time they realize there is a problem, it’s already too late.
The good news is, scaling your service team doesn’t have to be reactive. With proper workforce planning any growing service team can outpace demand and build a rock-star contact center.
Let’s dive in.
What you’ll learn:
- Why workforce planning is important for service teams
- Workforce planning best practices
- Tips for retaining contact center representatives
- Scale your team intelligently
Why workforce planning is important for service teams
Effective workforce planning is about more than filling seats on a schedule. It’s about making sure you have the right contact center representative available at the right time.
It works like this…
If a service team is short staffed customers will experience long wait times, missed calls, angry customers and burnt out agents. But if a team is overstaffed they are losing money. Neither of these situations benefit your business.
The contact center industry is huge. And if you’re trying to hire an onsite call center representative Tucson area companies are all fighting over the same quality talent. That’s why workforce planning is so important. When you have a plan of attack your team can spend more time finding qualified candidates and less time scrambling to fill positions.
Here’s why it’s even more critical now:
Per industry statistics 69% of companies plan to hire more contact center staff in the next year. The demand for contact center employees is going to skyrocket.
If you’re putting bandaids on your current team you will quickly fall behind.
Workforce planning best practices
Okay, so how do you intelligently plan for your growing service team? Well, it all starts with understanding your demand before diving into hiring.
Forecast demand
Before you start hiring, shift scheduling, or analyzing any numbers you need to understand your current and future demand. How many calls do you currently receive each day/week? Is there a seasonality to your calls or inquiries?
Forecasting is the foundation of every workforce planning strategy. Without accurate predictions your team will always be reacting to situations rather than preventing them.
Build a staffing model that scales
Once you understand current and future contact volumes it’s time to build a staffing model that will scale with your team. This includes:
- Understanding how many agents you need per shift
- What times of day you receive more calls (and schedule accordingly)
- Channel specific demand, do you get more emails than phone calls?
Forecasting these numbers allows you to build a staffing plan that matches actual demand. Not guess work. Not intuition. Numbers.
Upskill agents with training and coaching
Onboarding new hires is only half the battle. Your contact center representatives need to be trained to deliver quality service from day one.
Developing a strong training program will reduce on-boarding time and increase agent productivity. But don’t stop there. Ongoing training and coaching will improve agent morale and reduce headaches for your team.
Tips for retaining contact center representatives
Here’s the thing…
You can have the best workforce plan in the world but if you can’t keep your agents who cares?
Employee turnover has been an issue for contact centers for years with agent attrition rates hovering around 52% annually. That means if you have 100 agents on staff every single year you’ll need to hire 52 NEW employees just to maintain your current team.
High turnover rates are bad for business. They kill momentum. They frustrate new hires and drive your current employees insane. If you want to scale your service team intelligently you need to know how to retain your current employees.
Offer career development
Similar to training new hires, if you want your employees to stick around you need to offer career development options.
Your contact center representatives are your front line employees. But they shouldn’t stay at the front line forever. Promote from within and offer agents opportunities to grow with your company. Whether that’s becoming a team lead, shifting to quality assurance or offering cross-department positions to top performers.
Agents need to know there is a future for them at your company. Otherwise they won’t stay long enough to find out.
Communicate. A lot.
Any growing business struggles with communication at some point. Make sure your teams know what is going on at all levels. Why do we do the things we do? How does their position fit into the larger company goals?
Effective communication is one of the simplest ways to boost employee morale and increase productivity. Don’t forget to share the love with your agents.
Invest in your agents
When you talk about growing pains a lot of times you’re referring to your agents. Growing pains can cause uncomfortable, lengthy calls which then cause frustration for your customers and agents.
Make sure you have the proper training, tools, and resources your agents need to be successful.
Think your hiring process is bullet proof? Ask your current agents what questions you should ask. Better yet, let them interview new candidates. Your agents know what its like to work at your company, who better to train new hires?
Team building events, quarterly bonuses, mental health days. There are endless possibilities when it comes to investing in your employees. Just make sure your agents know you have their backs.
Scale your team intelligently
Hopefully, by now you understand that scaling your service team doesn’t have to be painful. If you plan ahead and build flexible systems your team will be set up for success.
Before you go here are the key takeaways:
- Forecasting current and future contact volumes
- Building a staffing plan
- Train new hires and continually develop your team
- Focus just as much on retention as you do hiring
The contact center industry isn’t going to slow down any time soon. If you want to compete for top tier talent you need to have your workforce planning strategy locked down. If you need help understanding where to start implementing these workforce planning strategies book a free consultation today.